Multiple story building ducting system



July 29, 1969 c. J. PANKOW 3,457,848

MULTIPLE STORY BUILDING DUCTING SYSTEM Filed Jan. 15, 1968 FIG. I

INVENTOR: CHARLES d. PANKOW BY F I G 3 6mm 9 MW ATTORNEYS United States Patent MULTIPLE STORY BUILDING DUCTING SYSTEM Charles J. Pankow, 2476 N. Lake Ave., Altadena, Calif. 91001 Filed Jan. 15, 1968, Ser. No. 697,723 Int. Cl. F24f 7/04; E04b /48 US. CI. 98-31 3 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE Vertical concrete ducts for air conditioning purposes in apartment house and hotel type multiple story buildings are provided by slip fonming techniques in the exterior walls and/or columns of the building. The various columns or exterior wall concrete structures include on inner sides vertically spaced lateral openings communicating with the respective tiered rooms. Each of the rooms in a tiered group defining the stories of the buildings can thus be serviced by single or multiple vertical ducts formed in the bearing column or exterior wall in the concrete and the necessity for extensive horizontal ducting is eliminated.

This invention relates generally to ducting systems and more particularly to air conditioning ducting systems in apartment and hotel type multiple story buildings.

It is presently known to provide vertical air ducts during the construction of office and other industrial type buildings for use with air conditioning systems in the building. In recent years, considerable economy has been realized by forming air ducts directly in the central core of the building for bulk distribution to different floor levels. These vertical ducts can be formed by slip form techniques directly in the central concrete cores of the buildings. However, there is still required extensive horizontal distribution ducts and these are generally provided by sheet metal ducting for proper distribution to various areas in the building. The necessity for the horizontal ducting is a consequence of the floor plan or layout characterizing office buildings.

In apartment house and hotel type multiple story buildings, there are necessarily provided a multiplicity of different rooms each of which should ideally be provided with its own inlet and air exhaust passages. Provision of the necessary ducting with presently known techniques would require considerable sheet metal ducting construction and fairly extensive horizontal ducting passages. As a consequence, considerable material, expense, and labor is involved in providing proper conditioning of air in the various rooms of the building.

With the foregoing in mind, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a novel multiple story building ducting system particularly suitable to apartment and hotel type buildings wherein the need for lateral or horizontal type ducting is substantially eliminated all to the end that a considerable savings in time, materials, and labor is realized in the construction of such buildings.

More particularly, it is an object of provide a unique ducting distribution system for multiple story apartments and hotel type buildings capable of being formed during the construction of the building itself and which largely avoids the necessity of any type of metal ducting or metal lining.

Another important object is to provide a ducting system wherein structural bearing portions of the building itself additionally serve to define the ducts with the advantage again of considerable economy in the overall construction osts for the building.

Briefly, these and many other objects and advantages of this invention are attained by taking advantage of the fact that apartment and hotel type multiple story build- 3,457,848 Patented July 29, 1969 ings necessarily include a relatively large number of vertical bearing concrete columns constituting a part of the exterior wall means. These columns enhance the aesthetic design of the exterior of the building as well as functioning practically in the construction of the multiplicity of rooms, normally similarly dimensioned, characterizing the particular type of building. In accordance with the invention, the exterior concrete wall means and/ or the various vertical columns forming a part of the wall means and vertically spanning a plurality of tiered rooms are provided with continuous vertical ducts. These ducts are slip formed during the manufacture of the wall means or columns to define vertical air passages. An inner side of the wall or column or dummy column is provided with vertically spaced lateral openings respectively positioned to communicate with the tiered rooms. The air in each of the vertically tiered rooms may thus be conditioned from a common air passage without the necessity of extensive horizontal ducting.

The wall means or columns may be designed to overlap two adjacent rooms when positioned at the intersection of the common wall of the adjacent rooms with the exterior wall so that the vertical ducts slip formed in the concrete column can serve two adjacent rooms at any one story at the same time.

The slip form technique in the construction of the duct within the concrete provides an ideal air passage and there is no necessity of lining the same with metal nor is there any necessity for any type of extensive horizontal metal ducting. As a consequence, a considerable savings in time, materials, and labor is realizable.

A better understanding of the invention will be had by now referring to certain embodiments thereof as illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIGURE 1 is a fragmentary broken away perspec tive view of a portion of a multiple story apartment type building incorporating the unique ducting system of the invention;

FIGURE 2 is an enlarged transverse cross section of one of the bearing columns taken in the direction of the arrows 22 of FIGURE 1;

FIGURE 3 is a fragmentary cross section taken in the direction of the arrows 33 of FIGURE 1;

FIGURE 4 is a transverse fragmentary cross section in plan of a portion of a modified ducting system for an apartment or hotel type building;

FIGURE 5 is an enlarged transverse cross section of one of the bearing columns in the construction of FIG- URE 4; and

FIGURE 6 is a fragmentary vertical cross section of a portion of the structure of FIGURE 4.

Referring first to FIGURE 1 there is shown a multiple story apartment or hotel type building broken away to illustrate part of the interior thereof. As shown, this structure includes an exterior rear wall means 10 and a plurality of interior walls 11, 12, 13 and 14. The interior walls 12, 13, and 14 serve as common walls for adjacent rooms or units in the building such as designated at 15, 16 and 17.

Oftentimes, the apartment or hotel type buildings are designed to provide each room or unit with an exterior view and in the particular construction illustrated in FIG- URE 1, the front wall 18 would also constitute an exterior wall there being provided additional interior walls as at 19, 20 and 21. The interior walls 20 and 21 serve as common walls for adjacent rooms such as indicated at 22 and 23. The inner interior walls 11 and 19 might define a central hallway providing access to the various exterior rooms.

Bearing columns of concrete which may constitute separate column structures or constitute an integral portion of the exterior walls are shown at 24, 25 and 26 for the rear wall structure 10 and 27 and 28 for the front wall structure 18. In accordance with the present invention, continuous vertical ducts are formed in these concrete columns by slip form techniques during the construction of the building. In the embodiment of FIGURE 1, the various structural aspects of the columns are identical so that a detailed description of one will suflice for all.

Thus, referring to the transverse cross section of FIG- URE 2, there is shown the column wherein there are provided continuous vertical ducts 29 and 30. In the particular example chosen for illustrative purposes, the column is T-shaped in cross section not only for aesthetic reasons but for providing a proper bearing column for the building. The cross arm of the T includes the vertical ducts 29 and as shown and this cross arm is dimensioned such that it will overlap adjacent rooms such as the rooms 15 and 16 when positioned at the intersection of the common wall 13 with the exterior wall 10. With this arrangement, lateral vertically spaced openings as indicated by the dotted lines 31 and 32 in FIGURE 2 provide communication between the rooms 15 and 16 with the vertical ducts 29 and 30 respectively.

The vertical spacing of the lateral openings are more clearly illustrated in the fragmentary cross section of FIG- URE 3 wherein there are illustrated three of the vertical openings 31, 31a and 31b for tiered rooms 15, 15a and 15b respectively, these tiered rooms defining the stories of the building. With this arrangement, it will be evident that one column structure such as the column structure 25 will provide suitable ducting or air passage means for adjacent rooms at each story, each continuous individual vertical duct serving as a common duct for the tiered rooms on one side of the common partition wall 13 and the other duct serving for the tiered rooms on the other side of the common wall.

With reference once again to FIGURE 1, it will be evident that one of the vertical ducts can serve as an air exhaust duct for each of the rooms in the vertical tiered array communicating with the various vertically spaced openings such as 31 for the column 25 and the other continuous vertical duct can serve as an air supply duct through the various vertical spaced openings such as 32 for the room 16 and the various tiered rooms above and below this room. The next adjacent column such as 26 illustrated in FIGURE 1 would then have its one vertical duct communicating with the lateral opening 33 serve as an air exhaust duct and its other vertical duct communicating with the lateral opening 34 serve as an air supply duct. Each of the various rooms accordingly would be provided with a supply duct and an exhaust duct and it will be evident that there is not required any substantial horizontal ducting to achieve this end.

The same situation obtains with respect to the front rooms 22 and 23 and cooperating bearing columns 27 and 28.

Referring now to FIGURE 4 there is shown a modified type of ducting system for a plurality of rooms or units defined between an exterior wall 35 and interior wall 36. Various partition walls divide the area into rooms 37, 38, 39 and 40. Bearing columns constituting a separate or integral part of the exterior concrete wall 35 are shown at 41 and 42. In this embodiment, each of the columns only includes a single continuous vertical duct such as indicated at 43 and the columns are horizontally spaced at every other intersection point of the common interior wall with the exterior wall 35. It will be noted that the single continuous vertical duct 43 is of sufficient dimensions to overlap adjacent rooms such as the rooms 37 and 38 for the column 41. Thus one single vertical duct will serve two adjacent rooms and this duct may serve, for example, as a common air exhaust duct for the adjacent rooms.

Cooperating with the exhaust ducts in the columns are air supply ducts formed in interior column structures 44 and 45 shown in FIGURE 4. The ducts in these interior vertical columns may he slip formed during the construction of the building and will be provided with suitable vertically spaced lateral openings for communication with the various rooms. Again, one column may serve two adjacent rooms.

Referring to the cross section of FIGURE 5, the vertically spaced lateral communiaction openings are illustrated for the column 41 at 46 and 47. Since the single vertical duct 43 is employed, in the example chosen for illustrative purposes, as an air exhaust duct, the lateral openings may be disposed adjacent to the floor slab f r the various rooms. This arrangement is illustrated in FIG- URE 6 wherein one of the floor slabs is illustrated at 48 with the later opening 46 disposed a short distance above the floor. Suitable grill type baffle structures 49 may be incorporated in the air exhaust opening 46 as shown.

The only difference in the structure described in FIG- URES 4 through 6 from that described in FIGURES 1 through 3 is the provision of air supply interior column ducts for cooperation with air exhaust ducts formed in exterior columns wherein the columns may be positioned at every other intersection of a common partition for adjacent rooms rather than at each intersection, In both embodiments of the invention as described, however, it will be evident that suitable ducting passages are provided for each of the various rooms in the multiple story dwelling without the necessity of any vertical ducting or any sheet metal lining or auxiliary ducting structures.

From the foregoing description, it will thus be evident that the present invention has provided a unique ducting system particularly suitable to apartment and hotel type multiple story buildings wherein all of the various objects set forth are fully realized.

I claim:

1. A multiple story building ducting system comprising, in combination: an exterior wall; a plurality of interior walls defining with said exterior wall a plurality of adjacent rooms; and a plurality of vertical concrete bearing columns interposed in said exterior wall at horizontally spaced intervals at the intersection of the common interior walls of said adjacent rooms with said exterior wall such that a portion of the inner side of each column overlaps each adjacent room, said columns serving as bearing supports for slab floors defining the multiple story of said building, each of said columns including at least one continuous vertical duct formed therein during the manufacture of said column to define an air passage, an inner side of said column including vertically spaced laterally extending openings communicating with successively vertically tiered rooms defining the stories of said building, and additional vertically spaced openings communicating with the interior thereof, the first mentioned vertical openings communicating respectively with tiered rooms on one side of the common interior wall and the additional vertically spaced openings communicating with tiered rooms on the other side of said common wall, whereby the air in each of said vertically tiered rooms may be conditioned from a common air passage without the necessity of horizontal ducting and whereby a single column provides air passage means for two rooms at each story.

2. The subject matter of claim 1, in which each of said columns includes an additional continuous vertical duct formed during the manufacture thereof, said additional vertically spaced openings communicating with said additional duct, one of said vertical ducts in each column serving as an air supply duct and the other of the vertical ducts serving as an air exhaust duct, said columns being disposed at each successive intersection of a common interior wall with said exterior wall so that each room is in communication with one air supply duct in one column and one air exhaust duct in the next sucessive column.

3. The subject matter of claim 1, in which said duct in each column serves as an air exhaust duct, said columns being disposed at every other successive intersection of a common interior wall with said exterior wall so that two adjacent rooms communicate with a common air exhaust duct in the column at the intersection of the common wall between said two adjacent rooms; and an air supply system in the interior of said building for supplying air to each room.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 6 2,530,940 11/1950 Dahlinm 9831 FOREIGN PATENTS 456,773 1950 Italy.

JOHN E. MURTAGH, Primary Examiner U.S. C1. X.R. 52221, 234, 303 

